The British public has been warned about an obscure website that streams live feeds from thousands of private webcams worldwide.

The website, reportedly
maintained by Russians, but registered to an offshore Australian
territory, shows listings of 500 webcam feeds in the UK, as well
as 4,591 in the US, 2,059 in France and 1,576 in the
Netherlands.

The site reportedly shows scenes from the UK, including offices,
driveways and children’s bedrooms.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) claimed the site has
been running for one month, but it was only brought to their
attention in the last 24 hours when they were alerted by global
data watchdogs.

The UK’s Information Commissioner Christopher Graham said the
website was operating globally and that British authorities were
alerted via other affected countries.

“I think this started in Macau and Hong Kong, they alerted
the Australians. The Australians alerted the Canadians. The
Canadians alerted us.

“We have known about this for about 24 hours and we’ve been
working out how best to deal with it. This is a good example of
cooperation between data protection authorities across the
world.”

Live feeds from the website, which is not being named by media
outlets for fear that publicity may increase traffic to the site,
can also be seen broadcasting images from Nicaragua, Pakistan,
Paraguay and Zimbabwe.

The site operates by hacking into insecure webcams which provide
remote access to their owners. Such webcams are popular with
parents wishing to monitor their children and business owners who
need to watch their property when offsite.

The live feeds have raised concerns about targeted burglaries, as
each broadcast shows the exact latitude and longitude of the
webcam, as well as the postal (zip) code of the property.

Graham told BBC Breakfast he wanted to “sound a general
alert,” warning “there are people out there who are
snooping.”

He further said he would work with Russian authorities to shut
the site down, claiming a similar site would be illegal in the
UK.

The ICO has not confirmed its sources linking the website to
Russian hackers.

Graham said he hoped the information would ensure parents and
owners would take the responsibility of securing their webcams
with more cryptic passwords.

“It is spooky. But after all, it is the responsibility of the
parents to set a proper password if you want remote access.”

The ability for users to access their webcams remotely is both
“an internet camera’s biggest selling point and, if not setup
correctly, potentially its biggest security weakness,” the group
manager for the technology at the office of the Information
Commissioner, Simon Rice, said

“You may think that having to type in an obscure web address
to access the footage provides some level of protection. However,
this will not protect you from the remote software that hackers
often use to scan the internet for vulnerable devices,” he
added.

While UK authorities have condemned the public use of illegally
obtained internet camera, former GCHQ Director Iain Lobban
praised the practice of his agents and surveillance workers after
the spy agency came under fire for accessing thousands of stills
from UK webcams.

Operation Optic Nerve, which was disclosed in February 2014 by
whistleblower Edward Snowden, showed that GCHQ, working with the
NSA, had compiled stills from over 1.8 million Yahoo users’
internet chat records.